That last link is full of warnings – press the stamp HARD onto the CP. Don’t use it in this way if you worry about messing up whatever you are stamping on to. Shake the mount. Wash the backs. blah blah blah.

I kept finding that, with every use, the CP surface got less and less sticky and washing it was too much of a bother if I had to do it every time I wanted to stamp an unmounted stamp.

I store most of my unmounted stamps like so:

In binders, and then in baseball card sleeves:

I have not ever wanted to go to the expense of mounting all the stamps, and bulking up the binders. So over the years I have come up with a few different methods that work for me. Generally, a strip of strong double-sided tape on a clear mount will do the trick.

I bought a bottle of Aileens Tack It (over & over) cause lots of people recommended it as a good way to make the red rubber, unmounted stamps into “cling” stamps. It works, sure, but then you have to store all these sticky backed stamps. Ah … No.

Fast forward to the post of CP as mount and….an idea!

Yep.

Why this works – first, the CP is just a bit spongy. Not too spongy, but enough that it acts as both the mount and the cushion and gives a nice image (might have been nice had I actually shown that – sorry, I’m out of practice at blogging) especially when stamping on to my cork-floor-tile-in-a-big-ziplock-bag stamping mat. Second, there is only the couple of CP chunks that are sticky. Easy to store. I keep a lot of plastic packaging. This is from a Spellbinders die. I just flipped the halves so rather than tightly encasing the die, there is a slim open area that fits two of the sticky CP bits.

Perfect fit.

Now, this makes sense for me because I already own a (mostly useless for the kind of monoprinting I like to do) Creative Palette. But the CP is not widely for sale anymore (or not that I could find) and if you don’t already have one, this is not a good enough reason to go buy one.

As a cheap alternative, I had a go at coating a piece of sticky-backed fun foam with the Tack It. It worked just fine.

There is a slight issue with the fun foam being quite thin. When you press to stamp the sticky surface can just grab the paper – I found this to be most problematic with tissue paper, not at all an issue with a paint-coated journal page, for example. I did not find it as much an issue with the CP-as-mount.

In hunting for my CP package, I unearthed a nice gelli-print, so I can add at least one decent looking image for you LOL!:

Now I must decide what to do with it.

If you have a Creative Palette gathering dust, why not turn it into a set of stamp mounts? If you don’t have one, try the sticky-backed fun foam. Let me know if it works for you!

In rummaging thru some of my folders of half-forgotten work, stuff I abandoned for one reason or another, I found a few things that I thought MIGHT have an audience. Some of them I updated in my Tall Box calendar style.

I made another set of One-Sheets for 2019 thru to 2022. They use a similar sketchy design as the cards here. Links to both the Sunday to Saturday and Monday to Sunday options in that post.

It could either be a plain, simple B&W one OR you could opt to colour it in. You can download that here.

I also had requests from different people, for a DOG or a CAT calendar. I always had dogs growing up, never been a cat person at all, but having had more than one person ask about them I figured I might give it a go. I had found a font that I thought was cute, that had some really quirky little drawings of cats and dogs. To be honest, for some of them I found it hard to tell which was which! I mean, look at this:

I added the whiskers cause I thought that was what made it look more cat-like. Flipped it looks more bulldog-like, sort of. Anyway, I had made the calendars but never added them. I will. Comment and tell me what you think. Cat:

Lastly, I’ve kinda jumped off the Project Life bandwagon. I used to do a lot of designs for cards, not just calendars, but they seem much less popular at the moment. As my time (and energy level) is pretty limited, I generally tend to do things I know (or at least think I know) will be useful. This is a set of calendar cards I made ages ago and never added.

I liked them pretty well, I just didn’t LOVE them. If YOU like them, grab them here.

I have a few others that I might update (like a little cartoon monster one for kids – thought it would be cute printed BIG for their wall each month) but any thoughts you have feel free to comment them here.

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I have been making calendars for quite a while. I learn new things about the process every year.

I was testing out a new process (boring, work-flow stuff) and had a thought I might do a calligraphy style calendar. Luckily, just as I started working on it, I got a ping-back request from Lolly Jane for their yearly round-up. And guess that? of the calendars they feature, a ton of them have calligraphy month names. Maybe even the majority of them. (Of course they featured the doily one – I am so tired of that one, but people do keep asking for it so I guess I’ll keep making it. Actually that has given me an idea…) While I thought the font I picked was super cute (and not a freebie one so not common) it was such a crowded field no one needed yet one more in the same style.

Saved myself a ton of work there then.

Instead, I decided to do something totally different – and because I really wanted to test out this work-flow process, I had to make two. Here they are – one black and white, but definitely not at all calligraphic:

Now, these will print at any size you like. When printing, look at your dialog box. Expand the Paper Size option. Here you can see all the native options for my (new A3) printer. Yours will have similar. At the bottom thee are my own specified “custom sizes” like coin envelopes or a 1/2 US letter size:

So if you want to print this as a sheet for your planner, you can. You can print it as a Project Life size card or as a huge wall calendar:

Virtually any calendar can be printed in virtually any size, if it is a PDF – some jpgs might work but if the resolution is low they might not be as crisp and clear as you would like.

My process seemed to work OK so I may explore a few other options throughout the year. Probably NOT a calligraphy one ‘tho. LOL!

Time to update my own page of 2019 calendars – I’ll probably try to do that and post in the next day or two. Now, about that idea….